


Family DeNile

by Gamebird



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 6-7 months post movie, Bonding Time, Booker has rejoined the group, Booker the unlikely therapist, Canon-Compliant, Gen, Nile has been harboring a secret all this time, Post-Movie, he's an example of what not to do and he knows it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28184673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gamebird/pseuds/Gamebird
Summary: The gang is back together and taking a vacation on Malta for some bonding time. Booker has just rejoined and doesn't know Nile any better than he did at the end of the movie, but to Nile's surprise, that still means he knows her a lot better than she thought.This fic is a standalone, although it links up with Recovery Time, my Big Bang entry, and Booker's Life Story. It's set six to seven months post-movie, or a few days after the Booker/Quynh scene.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20
Collections: The Old Guard Gift Exchange 2020





	Family DeNile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [energie_vie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/energie_vie/gifts).



Nile slid a steaming cup across the little balcony table to Booker, then sat down on the other side.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Hot cocoa. Or … I think that's what it is. There's cinnamon in it. I thought the picture on the outside of the box was self-explanatory so I didn't ask anyone to translate it for me. Turns out it wasn't quite what I was expecting."

He sniffed it, which didn't help much as she'd put marshmallows on top. He sipped, ending up with white goo stuck in his moustache. He licked at it as she did her best to stifle her smile. She looked out at the sea to give him a moment. The view was idyllic here in Malta. She told him, "It's not really cold enough for hot cocoa, but I was missing home. It's really cold in Chicago this time of year."

"Home, huh?" he said. She glanced over to see that Booker was doing things with his tongue and upper lip that were … athletic and unintentionally suggestive. She looked out at the view again. He asked, "Does this have any alcohol in it?"

Her brows drew together in disapproval. "Andy said you needed to dry out. And when _Andy_ says someone needs to dry out, I take that as a sign that maybe you really do need to dry out. So no, there's no alcohol in it. But you're a grown man. You can add what you want and deal with Andy yourself."

He rolled his eyes and sipped again. She hadn't decided yet if the marshmallows were the worst or best idea ever, because there he went with that tongue thing again. Maybe the best. She didn't look away as much this time. Man had skills. She tried to pull her mind out of the gutter and said, "You told me we didn't have withdrawal symptoms or anything. So you're not physically addicted to alcohol. That's still true, right?"

"Nng. Yes. This is good, thank you. It's very sweet."

"Sweeter than you like?"

He hesitated. "I can be honest?"

"I'd prefer it."

"Yes, sweeter than I like. But I will drink it because you made it for me."

She smiled. "Well, thank you for that, sir."

"'Sir?' Ha. I assume you know you don't need to call me that?"

"It's just something I said to be funny. Doesn't have to mean a lot." He nodded and looked out at the sea. She asked, "If I recall right, you said, 'I fought with Napoleon' when I asked how old you were."

"I did."

"So did you fight _against_ Napoleon, or _for_ him?"

Booker smiled and laughed softly. "You're a smart kid. Good memory, too."

"Yeah, now tell me something I don't know."

His grin broadened. "It was neither, really. My sentence for the conviction of forgery and counterfeiting was to be sent with Napoleon's army. I, and various other felons, were marched into the Russian winter with bad equipment and worse clothing. What food there was went to the military units Napoleon liked better. We suffered. It wasn't my war. So I left."

"Oh," she said softly. "You deserted."

"That implies I had some loyalty to them to start with, which I didn't. I think of it as: I escaped. I was caught. Hung. Left for dead. After I found the strength to get myself down, I was more careful and escaped again."

She grimaced at the mental image. "What happened after that?"

He shrugged. "I returned to France as an honorably discharged, upstanding Protestant named Sebastien Le Livre. I was a forger, remember?"

"That wasn't your name to start with?"

"No."

"What was it, then?"

"It doesn't matter."

Nile exhaled heavily. "All of you and your secrets."

"You have your own."

He said it dismissively, but she felt compelled to point out, "There's not much to know."

"Oh, I think there is." He cast his eyes over to her where they lingered on her face, reading her.

Uncomfortably, she said, "How many secrets could I have? I've been alive, like, ten percent of your life and less of the others." Of all things, he batted his eyes at her and tilted his head, raising his brows as though in pity. "What?" she said defensively.

He played with his drink, still watching her more closely than she wanted. She liked feeling seen, but this was ridiculous. Finally, he said, "I _know_." She glared. He couldn't _know_. He went on, "Copley wasn't the one who told me."

But Copley knew. How much had he and Booker talked during the last six months? The exile hadn't applied to _him_. But then, why was Booker saying Copley hadn't told her? How else _could_ he know? "What?" It came out as a hiss. "Who did, then?"

"You." He sipped his cocoa pointedly, watching her with a degree of merriment that made her want to deck him. He licked marshmallow off his moustache slowly enough that she recognized he was goading her.

She leaned forward, her voice dropping. "What the hell are you talking about?"

He wiped his upper lip clean with the back of his hand, dispensing with the show. He leaned forward in turn, matching her tone. "First lesson – if someone acts like you're concealing something, don't rise to the bait. Now you've confirmed what I only suspected. Second lesson – remember who you're talking to. My family was everything to me. You've said yours was to you. You expect me to believe you gave them up after knowing us for two days?" He smirked and shook his head. "No. We're not that sexy. And you're not that motivated by your base drives."

She grimaced and leaned back in her chair, trying to figure out how he'd put that together. "You must be some kind of Sherlock. That's what Andy meant when she said you were the brains of the outfit." He didn't say anything. "Do the others know?"

"No." He leaned back as well. "The others have no reason to think on it."

"But you do?"

"I do."

"Why?"

"Because more than the others, I know what it's like to be new and young compared to the rest, to feel like you can't measure up and you never will. You don't feel you can be authentic, because you think that couldn't possibly be good enough. So you hide things, important things, and you tell them what you think they want to hear."

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Keep talking."

He looked at the ocean and gave a self-deprecating smile. "I won't tell you simply to trust them. Or, us, rather. Because they failed me and I failed them." His shoulders slumped. "But so did my family – my other family. And it didn't change my love for them. Whatever you decide and however you conduct yourself, you're one of us. That doesn't go away, even if you … make bad decisions as I did."

"What are you going to tell the others?"

He shook his head. "Nothing."

She relaxed even as she wondered if he was for real.

He asked, "Do you need help?"

"No. Copley-" She stopped. "You don't know- Or maybe you _do_." She fixed him with her hardest gaze. "Maybe you _do_ know how much I want to spill it all to someone, _anyone_ , who would understand." She might as well, if he already knew she hadn't abandoned her family like she'd been pretending to the others for the last six months.

"I never had that option. There was no one there." He gestured at himself. "But here I am." He gave that self-deprecating smile again. "Too bad for you. If we're going to have this conversation, we should take a walk. The beach, preferably. The waves cover the sound of our voices and you can see far enough to notice if we're being followed. Nicky has no reason to eavesdrop and his gear is still packed on any account."

"You've thought this through?" She raised her brows in doubt.

He shrugged. "I know how to be discreet."

He'd managed to fool Andy, Joe, and Nicky right up to the end. The man knew how to keep his mouth shut, that was for sure. She finished her cocoa as she ruminated over his possible untrustworthiness vs her need to talk to someone. "Okay. Let's do this."

Other than the constant sound of the ocean, the beach was quiet. Not exactly deserted, but it was the off season. The weather was cool. People weren't thronging the place like they did when it was warmer. The two of them walked along the rough sand without having to dodge tourists too often. She asked, "What do you want to know?"

"You've talked to them – your family?"

"Yes."

"What did you tell them?"

"That I'd left the Marines and been assigned to a different group. It's hush-hush and I'm not allowed to talk about work, but it's still endorsed by the government. Just … black box stuff. High clearance. They tell me … _My mother_ tells me, that she understands. I don't think she does, but it's a story. I'm still in the military as far as everyone is concerned." They walked for a while in silence. She asked, "You got more questions?"

"I'm not here to question you. I'm here in case you want to talk." He walked with his hands stuffed into his pockets. He glanced behind them a lot, like it was a habit. There was no one back there.

Finally, she said, "I didn't tell them about the …" she waved vaguely, "immortality thing. Or the healing. I kept thinking of what you'd said about how it would turn out if I did." She pressed her lips together and shook her head. "And I kept thinking about what I told Andy – that they wouldn't know I wasn't aging for a while and I had time."

She sighed. "I just … I don't know what to do with that time. What _do_ I do? Go home and fake it? Call her every now and then and … what? Make small talk? I mean, it's nice. I _have_ heard her voice again, several times, and I know she knows something is wrong, because she's gotten all sweet with me, that, 'You can tell me anything' tone of voice." Her shoulders slumped. "I don't know what to tell her."

"What would you like to tell her?"

"That I'm scared … of losing her. But that's stupid because I'm going to lose her anyway. You know, probably. Eventually." She waved a frustrated hand at the world. "Even without this immortal thing, she's _my mother_. She's going to go first unless something weird happens to me." She sighed again. "Back when I deployed, my brother pointed out that statistically it's more dangerous to be a convenience store clerk than it is to be in the military. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think it made him feel better so I didn't argue. But my point is, people can die anywhere."

"Mortality is frightening to us all. Not so much for our own sake, but for those around us. Joe and Nicky have one topic that is off-limits between them, one thing they have agreed to never speak of." He was silent until Nile turned to him expectantly, then he added, "What they will do if one of them goes before the other."

She thought about the two of them. They were inseparable. At least Andy had known Quynh still lived. "That … yeah. That's heavy. Nine hundred years together and they can't talk about that? How am I supposed to talk to my mother? Or my brother?"

"Maybe you don't."

Nile gave him a skeptical look. "Is that what you recommend?"

"I don't have recommendations. I tried several ways, with different people in my life. I never found a way that was right. Andy tells me there isn't one and death hurts no matter what. I remember a conversation with her a century ago where she was trying to console me …"

He paused to laugh ruefully at the 'consolation' before continuing, "that there was a nobility in that pain. That it meant you still cared and that was all that mattered – your own heart. Other people's feelings, their hearts, their minds – that was their business. The loss of others is a pain that doesn't go away for however long you remember them. Forgetting is a balm." He turned to Nile. "Her advice is often depressing."

Nile had to laugh. "Okay, that _is_ some of the most depressing shit I've ever heard and the idea that she was trying to make you feel better and said that is …" She shook her head. "I can kinda see where she's coming from, though. Good boundaries, I guess."

Booker nodded. "Yes."

"So what she's saying is …" Nile tilted her head, her steps slowing. "She told me, outside Copley's house after you'd already left to scout it … I was telling her how I didn't want to be a killer, and how it had made me feel to kill that man in Afghanistan. She told me I had to _feel it_. That I _had to_ feel it. Like it was part of me." She swallowed. "It's the same advice."

"Same woman."

"Yeah. So what does this mean for my family? That it's going to hurt and I just have to suck it up?"

"If you love them, then it's going to hurt. I'm not sure about the other."

"Another one of those things that doesn't go away just because you live forever – still hurts to get burned, still hurts to lose people. How do you deal with that?"

Booker shrugged. "I think you're supposed to talk with people."

"Like you? Like this?"

"I think so."

"Is that what you're doing now? Booker the therapist?"

"I know what it's like not to have anyone you can talk to. It's why I joined the group eventually. After Jean-Pierre died …" He rubbed at the corner of one eye gently. "There was no one there for me. No one I could talk to. Even about him. I was … around a hundred and fifty by then. I joined the group, even though I didn't talk to them much about that, about my family or the dreams or what really mattered. But at least I could be truthful about who I was. In some ways." He glanced at her a few times out of the corner of his eye. "It helped."

She nodded. "You're giving me the opportunity to be truthful. To be … 'authentic' is the word you used."

"Most of my life has been false. Always hiding something. Nicky tells me it's a burden I need to put down. Or … let the group help me carry." Booker snorted softly. "Nicky is, ah, he is Nicky. He means well."

"You must agree with him, though. Because that's what you're trying to talk me into doing."

"I'm not trying to talk you into anything. I'm telling you how it hasn't worked for me. What you do is your own business. Andy's advice again."

Nile nodded and kicked at a rill of sand. "Thank you for listening. And telling me. And not telling me what to do. I appreciate all that."

He nodded slowly and stopped. "Do you want to go back home?" He was looking at her, not the direction they'd come from. The question was bland and uninflected, but she knew what he was really asking.

"This is my home." She looked deliberately back at the apartment overlooking the Maltese cove. She looked back to him. "Here, with all of you."

"It is." He turned and they started heading back.

"You know," she said as they walked, "you're going to have to stop hiding who you were born as, one of these days."

"I'll make you a deal: you tell the others what you've done with your family, and I'll tell you my whole story."

"True version?"

"True version."

Nile regarded him with narrowed eyes. "I'm going to hold you to that."

He tipped his head in acknowledgement. "When do you plan on telling them?"

"I … I don't know." She looked away uncomfortably.

He chuckled and slung an arm around her shoulder. "When you're ready and not a moment sooner. Until then, I win."

She play-punched him in the ribs. Laughing, he recoiled. She said, "So you're making it a contest, now? Pulling out the big guns, I see. It's not just a deal. It's a win/lose now. You really want me to do this."

"It's up to you." Caught out, he grinned as he put his hands up in mock surrender.

"Yeah, and I hear you tacking on 'loser' at the end of that!" She shook her head, grinning along with him, but knowing that he must care if he was trying to engage her competitiveness. She exhaled heavily and sobered. "Alright. I'll think about it."

"I will as well. I have a few hundred years of thoughts to organize."


End file.
